Anxiety and Help Seeking Behaviors

说明(申请人提供)：研究表明，少数民族青年使用精神卫生服务的比率比高加索儿童低得多，尽管症状发生率相似。尽管医疗保险状况、语言障碍和治疗师与患者之间的种族匹配等结构性因素似乎有助于不同的使用模式，但它们并没有完全解释这些差异。这项拟议的研究将考察文化因素与种族、社会经济地位、儿童性别和母亲特质焦虑在预测父母对儿童焦虑症状和求助的判断方面的作用。参与者将是114名亚裔印度人、波多黎各人或欧洲裔美国人的母亲(每组38人)。参与者将提供人口统计信息，并将完成文化适应、独立和相互依赖的自我建构、宗教信仰强度和特质焦虑的测量。参与者还将阅读两个小插曲，一个描述一名8岁儿童表现出有躯体症状的DSM-IV分离焦虑症(SAD)症状，另一个描述一名8岁儿童表现出无躯体症状的DSM-IV分离焦虑症(SAD)症状。小插曲中描述的孩子的性别将与参与者的孩子的性别相匹配。在每个小插曲之后，母亲们将回答几个问题，涉及与孩子的行为相关的可能的担忧和损害程度，在没有干预的情况下改善的可能性，孩子行为的可能原因，以及假设她们是孩子的父母，他们寻求帮助的首选模式。多元回归分析将检验每个变量在预测父母对SAD症状(有或没有躯体症状)和寻求帮助的判断中的相对贡献。父母的判断将在两种条件(躯体和非躯体)之间进行比较，并将探索观察到的条件之间差异的预测因素。这项研究将有助于我们了解文化因素在美国年轻人不同的精神卫生服务利用模式中的作用。通过深入了解促成不同利用模式的文化因素，可以采取步骤向有需要的儿童提供有效的、与文化相适应的服务。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research suggests that ethnic minority youth utilize mental health services at a substantially lower rate than Caucasian children, despite similar rates of symptomatology. Although structural factors such as health insurance status, language barriers, and ethnic match between therapist and client appear to contribute to differential utilization patterns, they do not fully account for these differences. The proposed study will examine the role of cultural factors in conjunction with ethnicity, socioeconomic status, child gender, and maternal trait anxiety in predicting parental judgments about child anxiety symptomatology and help seeking. Participants will be 114 mothers of Asian-Indian, Puerto Rican, or European-American descent (38 from each group). Participants will provide demographic information, and will complete measures of acculturation, independent and interdependent self-construal, strength of religious faith and trait anxiety. Participants will also read two vignettes, one describing an 8-year-old child exhibiting DSM-IV symptoms of separation anxiety disorder (SAD) with somatic symptoms, and one describing an 8-year-old child exhibiting DSM-IV symptoms of SAD without somatic symptoms. The gender of the child described in the vignettes will match the gender of the participant's child. After each vignette, mothers will answer several questions regarding the likely level of concern and impairment associated with the child's behavior, the likelihood of improvement without intervention, the likely cause of the child's behavior, and preferred modes of help seeking assuming they were this child's parent. Multiple regression analyses will examine the relative contributions of each variable in predicting parental judgments of SAD symptomatology (with and without somatic symptoms) and help-seeking. Parental judgments will be compared between the two conditions (somatic versus non-somatic), and predictors of observed differences between the conditions will be explored. This study will contribute to our knowledge regarding the role of cultural factors in differential mental health service utilization patterns across youth in the United States. With an in-depth understanding of cultural factors that contribute to differential utilization patterns, steps can be made to provide effective, culturally-compatible services to children in need.